An Exterior Layout Of The First Home

It is not uncommon for us to get a few email and comment questions about the way our house is situated on our lot. Many people cannot figure out where the patio leads or where our garage is located in relation to our house so we figured we should whip up a little exterior diagram for ya. We in fact have nearly an acre of land and an extremely deep woods behind our house for privacy, which we enjoy (it is in fact one of the main reasons we picked up our seen-better-days ranch home). And we were also lucky sufficient to have inherited some strong privacy hedges and fences that keep our yard feeling pleasant and secluded from our neighbors on either side. But on with the tour! Here is our looooong and skinny lot (to scale):

You might not believe that this rendering could possibly be to scale (is your house truly that small? is your lot truly that long?) but we traced over a scaled blueprint of our property (found in our giant file of papers from the closing). Is not it funny how Compact our house is compared to the acreage that it is on?! You will notice a few things right away. Poor John has a lot of grass to mow (enjoy ya honey!), we have an extremely long driveway with room for a whole bunch of cars at the end, and we have more than sufficient trees and shrubs to feel like we live in the middle of the woods. You can also see how the sunroom stairs lead down to the patio, which leads out to the driveway, which is where we brought in our little herb & veggie garden (in one of the only full sun spots we had thanks to all the aforementioned foliage).

And because we get quite a few questions about where all of those sliding glass doors in our sunroom lead, we will clear that up once and for all…

Only one set of doors leads out to the back patio while the rest lead absolutely nowhere. Truly, if you stepped out of them you’d fall about 5 feet into the edible garden or the bushes on the side of the house (see diagram above). But we enjoy that they are there for the view and the cross breeze that they provide when we slide ’em open. The one that leads to a few brick steps that take you to the back patio is simply out of frame to the right in this picture (see the corner of the doormat?):

And here is a view of the patio from those stairs that lead down to that area:

But let us rewind and start from the street. Here is the house fairly much from the edge of the long driveway where it meets the street:

And if you walk up the driveway towards the house, here is the side view:

Then as you enter the big part of the driveway in the back you will see where we had the tables set up for our backyard wedding:

Of course we have since painted the garage black, so on an ordinary day without 75 people back there it looks like this:

Here is the view if you turn slightly to the right:

And here is the scenery when you turn even more to the right and walk towards the gate (which leads to the patio). You will notice our little edible garden simply outside the gate in front of the brick stairway that is tucked away behind that lamp post. It leads down to the private entry basement (which is primed for a major makeover, stay tuned…)

Once you enter the back gate you will find yourself on the cobblestone path that leads to the patio. Here is a shot looking back at the garage from inside the fence:

And here is a shot looking up at the back of the house and the patio from that cobblestone path by the gate:

Of course we cannot forget the view of that crazy deep woods behind our backyard. We enjoy that we have a pleasant sized grassy area for Burger/future babies along with the privacy and seclusion that the deeply wooded area offers.

Lot, we enjoy you.

Cannot you see why it was the lot and not the house that stole our hearts and wooed us into making an offer? All that privacy and green was simply so seductive after many years in the concrete jungle that is Manhattan.

So there you have it. A tour of our home’s exterior. What about you folks. Do you have any unusual features? A long skinny property? A detatched garage? A separate entry basement? A chicken coup? (We in fact inherited one behind the garage!) Do tell.